As e-commerce grows, so does cybersquatting

"About 95% of such cases are transferred to the complainant through arbitration and some might get dismissed and some might go to the courts," Krishnaa said.Rasul Bailay | ET Bureau | January 21, 2016, 08:23 IST

India's domain name regulator has transferred more than 700 web addresses ending with .in and .co.in in the last 10 years from illegal registrars to companies including Pepsi, Morgan Stanley, Walmart, McDonalds, Amazon, Flipkart and Skype even as cybersquatting - or, registering of domain names of known brands and entities with unscrupulous intention - amid growing e-commerce becomes widespread in the country.

"The number (of companies lodging complaints of cybersquatting) is steadily increasing as we receive 7-8 cases a month," said RR Krishnaa, legal officer for National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), an autonomous regulator for domain names in the country. It received more than 20 such complaints between December 15 and January 15, he said.

"About 95% of such cases are transferred to the complainant through arbitration and some might get dismissed and some might go to the courts," Krishnaa said.

Since 2004, the government of India authorised NIXI to operate and manage .in registry in the country. The association also acts as a dispute reversal agency for .in and.co.in domain suffixes according to India's .In Dispute Resolution Policy (INDRP).

According to Registry. in website, 99 such disputed cases were filed with the agency in 2015, up from 77 in 2014. Earlier this month, US-based burger giant Wendy's, which entered India last year, approached NIXI alleging cyber squatting of Wendys.in domain name by a Hong Kong-based company and the domain name was transferred to the US company by the NIXI-appointed arbitrator.

In another case, two firms fought over the word gaadi (Hindi for vehicle) before the arbitrator finally ordered transferring of Gaadi.in from a US-based firm to Jaipur-based Gaadi.com.

The earlier owner of Gaadi. in contested the decision, saying that the word gaadi is generic in Hindi and that the US company had registered Gaadi.in well before Gaadi.com came into existence.

"By purchasing the domain name Gaadi.in, prior to Gaadi.com even being in existence, it was pretty clear I was going to have to do something with cars," Paul Singh, administrator for Gaadi.in, said in an emailed response to ET, adding that he was "disappointed" by the administrator's order to transfer his domain name to Gaadi.com.